The power of women to read the minds of men.

1. Power Line's John Hinderaker has a lot of problems with Hillary Clinton's story of what it was like for her to take the LSAT in 1968. Last May, Hillary said: "We were in this huge, cavernous room... And hundreds of people were taking this test, and there weren’t many women there. This friend and I were waiting for the test to begin, and the young men around us were like, ‘What do you think [you’re] doing? How dare you take a spot from one of us?’ It was just a relentless harangue.' Clinton and her friend were stunned. They’d spent four safe years at a women’s college, where these kinds of gender dynamics didn’t apply." Were the young men actually saying those things to her and her friend? We see the usage "were like" followed by statements a magazine (New York) put in quotes, but it's not quite an assertion that these words were said. It's more of a dramatization of what Hillary felt at the time, perhaps because of something they said — "harangue" implies some speaking on the part of the men — but perhaps Hillary is relaying only her sense of what they must have been thinking.

2. Recently, Lena Dunham described her experience at the very swanky Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Gala sitting at a table next to the talented, attractive football player Odell Beckham Jr. She said: "And it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like: 'That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.' It wasn’t mean. He just seemed confused." Again, we see something in quote marks with a to-be-like intro: "He was like." He didn't actually say those words. Dunham was simply performing her subjective ideation around what he might have been thinking about her. It's comical and she's a comedian. It has the advantage of being self-deprecating. But it attributes mean thoughts to him. He never said those things, and it's not that hard to tell that the quotes are not real quotes. But it takes a liberty with another person's mind.

3. I'll be looking for things to add to this list. I just noticed #1 today, and it made me think of #2. Send me suggestions. I'm especially interested in the "He was like" usage to grab the female privilege to present mind-readings of men. I'm not totally condemning the belief in and use of this power of women to read the minds of men. Figuring out what's really going on in other people's minds is one of the highest levels of human thought. It is what great novelist do. The key is doing it well and doing it ethically. Like a great novelist. Or a great comedian. Or great feminist scholar. But you have to work on that power, and it's not easy to be great, and even when you are great, you're going to annoy and outrage a lot of people, and they're not all going to bow down and acknowledge your greatness.

IN THE COMMENTS: I went first with:

An award will be given to the first person to make what I believe is THE most predictable comment.

After a number of incorrect efforts, I wrote:

Prize not yet won.

Thanks.

When I posted that, I read a couple more comments including the winner, by campy:

Predictable comment: there are no great feminist scholars.

The prize is front-paging. Congratulations, campy. And I appreciate that you put your award-winning comment in the voice of someone else making the wisecrack that pre-annoyed me and not as your own disparagement of feminist scholarship. Huzzah!

Hey, Trump supporters: You should resist the "Weekend at Bernie's" joking about Hillary's stumbling, collapsing walk.

It's too much like something that is already a problem for Trump: Mocking the disabled.



Whether that's really mocking a disabled person or not, it is perceived as a gap in decency and empathy, and further humor of that type is going to fit the confirmation-bias template about him.

"A failed attack involving a car loaded with gas canisters near Notre Dame Cathedral was spearheaded by a group of women that included a 19-year-old..."

"A plot conceived and carried out by a group of women would mark a new step in the Islamic State group’s attempts to sow fear in Europe...."

Women in the group do not take part in attacks, [said Matthieu Suc, author of “Wives of Jihadis”], but are there “to ensure the longevity of the caliphate” by having babies and providing moral support. But, he added, “there are often young girls, who are just as radicalized as the young men, and they also want the status of martyr, and they want to act.”...

"A sharpshooter killed a top ISIS executioner and three other jihadists with a single bullet from nearly a mile away..."

"... just seconds before the fiend was set to burn 12 hostages alive with a flamethrower...." 

The British Special Air Service marksman turned one of the most hated terrorists in Syria into a fireball by using a Barett .50-caliber rifle to strike a fuel tank affixed to the jihadi’s back.... The pack exploded, killing the sadistic terrorist and three of his flunkies, who were supposed to film the execution....

5 thoughts on that doctor's statement that Hillary "was diagnosed with pneumonia."

1. We heard that statement from Dr. Lisa Bardack, "who examined her at her home in Chappaqua." Bardack said, "On Friday, during follow up evaluation of her prolonged cough, she was diagnosed with pneumonia." I can't tell from that whether Bardack is the one who did the examination on Friday and gave the diagnosis of pneumonia. Perhaps Bardack is cagily relating what some other doctor saw fit to say to Clinton, and Bardack herself does not believe that is the correct diagnosis. I'm assuming Bardack will not lie, which is why I'm noticing the particular words and the distance Bardack has taken from that diagnosis.

2. Bardack also said, after Clinton's collapse yesterday at the 9/11 event, that "she became overheated and dehydrated," and "she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely." This seems like a separate diagnosis apart from the diagnosed-on-Friday pneumonia, or is that supposed to be a consequence of the pneumonia? Bardack does seem to be attaching her reputation to the assertion that Hillary "became overheated and dehydrated," but that's just a statement of the symptoms, not why they happened. It wasn't a hot day, but Hillary might have become hot because of the bright sun and her heavy clothing. I just can't tell from Bardack's statement whether there is some underlying medical problem that would lead to overheating. What's the diagnosis, the reason for overheating? I don't think Bardack said anything that even purports to be an answer to that question.

3. NBC — the news site at the link above — has a health news reporter explaining the concept of "walking pneumonia" — "patients don't feel great, but they're not sick enough to stay home in bed or to be hospitalized.... Pneumonia can be caused by viruses or bacteria [or fungi], and it refers to an infection that gets into the lungs. Bacterial pneumonia is common, usually not serious and easily treated with antibiotics." Since Bardack told us that Hillary Clinton "was put on antibiotics," it might mean that the diagnosis was bacterial pneumonia, but it might mean that antibiotics were given because they'd work if it's bacterial, and it might be bacterial, so try antibiotics because they might work. If not, we know it's viral... or fungal... or bacteria that didn't respond to that antibiotic... I don't know.

4. "Walking pneumonia" is not a technical term, and it seems particularly infelicitous when Hillary quite conspicuously could not walk.

5. I think it's fair to say that the Clinton campaign has been withholding information about Hillary's health and that it intends to continue to withhold as much as it can. The Bardack statement seems only to push us back in a hope that we will not ask for more, and that came only after a very dramatic, impossible-to-ignore video of Hillary collapsing.

When Hillary boasted of her support from "Americans, white Americans... whites... who had not completed college."

May 2008.

“These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that,” she said in the interview....

In Indiana alone, six in 10 white voters went for Mrs. Clinton, where she narrowly won the primary.... Mr. Begala, a Clinton supporter, said the party could not win in November with just “eggheads and African-Americans,” that the party could not ignore white middle-class voters....

ADDED: Meade read this and said: "These are the deplorables." And then, re Begala's "eggheads": "Does anybody have more of an egghead than Paul Begala? Just call him Paul Egg-gala."

The 9/11 lights in 2007, cut short by low hanging clouds.

That was my view from Brooklyn, the year when I was a visiting professor.

"We already know, from experienced intelligence and counterterrorism experts, that leaders within ISIS are rooting for [Trump's] victory."

Said Hillary Clinton on CNN's "State of the Union" today.

Is that something we know? I'm trying to check that out. I see this from September 8th at the Washington Examiner:

Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the Islamic State wants Donald Trump to win the presidency because he would be a weaker leader, and she also reiterated her pledge to keep ground troops out of the Middle East during her first press conference in 2016.

Clinton cited an article by a national security expert that argued the Islamic State "supports Donald Trump".... "I think putting a big contingent of American ground troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria would not be in the best interest of the fight against ISIS," Clinton said after reporters suggested her unequivocal pledge to keep troops out of the region could box in her strategy. "I think it would fulfill one of their dearest wishes, which is to drag the United States back into a ground war in that region," she added.

Would ISIS want a ground war? In any case, Trump hasn't promised a ground war. He's only said it's foolish to take anything off the table. What is the authority for Clinton's statement except Clinton herself? Who is this "national security expert" and did he somehow know what ISIS leaders want?

I found "Why ISIS Is Rooting for Trump," by Mara Revkin and Ahmad Mhidi in Foreign Affairs:

[I]nterviews with ISIS supporters and recent defectors suggest [that] jihadists are rooting for a Trump presidency because they believe that he will lead the United States on a path to self-destruction. Last week, an ISIS spokesman wrote on the ISIS-affiliated Telegram channel, Nashir, “I ask Allah to deliver America to Trump.” Meanwhile, an ISIS supporter posted on one of the numerous jihadist “channels” hosted by the Telegram messaging application, “The ‘facilitation’ of Trump’s arrival in the White House must be a priority for jihadists at any cost!!!”

Okay, so a "spokesman" and a "supporter" supposedly said something. Should we trust them to tell the truth? Why would they give a useful argument to a candidate it didn't want to win? It would make more sense to interpret the evidence as a preference for Hillary.

Bob Wright and I talk about Donald Trump.

Yes, I know, Hillary stumbled and collapsed today. You already know that. If I can think of something original to say about it later, I'll post about that. Right now, I wanted to show you this new Bloggingheads episode, which just went up. It was recorded on Friday morning, so that was before "basket of deplorables." We do talk quite a bit about Trump and the election. I'm going to watch it now, so I'll add some details in an update as I'm reminded of what we talked about.



ADDED: This is the best part, I think, about whether Trump deserves more credit than he's gotten:



ALSO: I think this is the Peter Beinart article that Bob refers to: "Trump's Immigration Policy Trap." I don't think it says what Bob claims it says. I said — as I'd already said on this blog — that it's very hard to find any direct statement from Trump that he would deport the 11 million people who are here illegally but living peaceful, settled lives. Bob says Beinart found them, but what Beinart says is:

At the second debate, on September 16... Trump had promised only to deport undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals. He had ducked Tapper’s question about the entire 11 million....

[I]n the third debate... Trump ignored the reference to deporting 11 million and focused his answer on the wall...

That's my point!

It’s not that Trump never discussed deportation during the primaries. Over the course of hundreds of interviews, he was occasionally forced to admit that, yes, he would send all the undocumented home. 

Where's the quote? I think Trump only said things like "They will go home," not that they'd be actively seized and thrown out.

But he discussed the topic as little as possible....

That's my point! 

Fierce memorial.

I photographed this 9/11 mural in NYC on the door of Engine Company 6, and first blogged it here. And here's the story of Ladder Company 6:

They went in to fight a fire. They’re alive, they say, because they stayed together to save a life. This is the story of Ladder Company 6 and a woman they call their guardian angel.

Tommy Falco: “I just heard the rumbling and the shaking. And I imagine we got knocked down the stairs. And I just remember laying down and, OK, this is it, you know, what’s it going to feel like. And I said, ‘This is how it ends for me.’”...

9/11.

"The media elites are in a panic. They witnessed the meltdown of their candidate in broad daylight and can feel that shiver up their spine..."

"... except that this time, it is not the delight of victory they are feeling, but the dread of defeat," writes Kenneth R. Timmerman at The Hill.

They watched her spar unsuccessfully over this issue with Clinton Global Initiative member and NBC morning news anchor Matt Lauer during Wednesday night's national security forum, and blamed her poor performance on — Matt Lauer.

The Washington Post is now essentially an arm of the Democratic National Committee. It has done this with deep investigative dive into the penetralia of the Trump empire and no equivalent reporting about the Clinton emails, the Clinton Foundation's corrupt pay-to-play scheme or the nonstop lies from Clinton herself.

All very interesting. Read the whole thing. Timmerman is an out Trump supporter. I'm just going to get distracted by the word "penetralia."

It is a word. Not a coinage. My dictionary — the Oxford English Dictionary — says it's "The innermost parts or recesses of a building; spec. the sanctuary or inner sanctum of a temple. Also fig.: secret parts, mysteries, etc." From the diverse the historical examples:

1876   J. G. Holland Story of Sevenoaks (new ed.) xxiii. 323   They followed the boy into the penetralia of the great office.
1947   B. N. Cardozo Paradoxes Legal Sci. 99   We reach the penetralia of liberty when we throttle the mental life of a group so fundamental.
1994   H. Weinstein Better Man vii. 73   Even since Spock's mind-blowing journey through the vast penetralia of the machine-being V'ger a couple of years earlier.

I just want to say: 1. I hope the boy is okay. 2. I can't find a searchable copy of Cardozo's book, and despite the seeming love of lawyers for Cardozo, I can't find that quote in any case, so I can't tell you what group's penetralia he didn't want to throttle. 3. Nice to see "Star Trek" pop up in this context. And: What a great word! Penetralia. It's like genitalia, but, despite sounding sexier, you can use it in all sorts of contexts, from lofty legal bullshit to pop culture chatter.

I just noticed that Hillary's dad looks like Tim Kaine.

"Black Voters Are So Loyal That Their Issues Get Ignored."

Writes Farai Chideya at FiveThirtyEight.

As Donald Trump likes to say: "You've got to be willing to walk away."

There's also Saul Alinsky: "No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation."

And look at the extent of the power that is not being used: There is very good reason to believe that black people will determine the outcome of the election.

Don't misoverestimate Hillary Clinton — "generalistic" is not a word.

I mean, it wasn't a word until Hillary Clinton blurted it out in one of the worst quotations I've ever seen a political candidate produce:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, right?” Clinton told the friendly audience fired up to see Barbra Streisand perform at the cavernous Cipriani on Wall Street. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.”

A comfortable setting. I hadn't noticed that Barbra Streisand was involved in this headslappingly stupid revelation of the contents of the mind of Clinton. We're frequently assured that Hillary Clinton is very intelligent — and we're being asked to rely on her judgment — but this was incomprehensibly stupid. Remember "Bushisms" and "Palinisms"? My post heading, above, commemorates one of the best Bushisms: "They misunderestimated me."

It's dangerous to misjudge a person as dumber than he really is, but it's dangerous — in different ways — to think that someone is smarter than she really is. And obviously, there are different aspects of intelligence. In a President, we want someone who can perceive all the factors and resolve complex issues with good decisions (as opposed to, say, nailing every geography question like What is Aleppo? or memorizing and reciting elaborate policy statements). Hillary seems to have let the audience in her immediate presence — Streisand fans — to loosen her up — she sounds drunk — and to say something that perhaps has already gotten laughs behind closed doors with intimates.

I'm not saying I think she did drink before speaking, only that — on the recording — I hear the woozy tones of the lowered inhibition and slack facial musculature you could get from drinking too much but that I assume she soaked up from her luxuriating position in front of an adoring crowd.

And I think we need a President whose judgment is NOT impaired by her immediate surroundings but who knows how to keep unseen people and places clearly in mind when figuring things out for us and for the rest of the world.

Not only did Hillary Clinton fail to anticipate how her remark would be heard outside of the ultra-glamorous Cipriani, but she also envisioned tens of millions of Americans in "grossly generalistic" terms — as if absurdly crude stereotyping belonged in presidential decisionmaking and people can be understood and dismissed as worthless under big inflammatory labels like "racist" and "sexist." It's not just an unfortunate quote that no one will forget. It's a revelation of a quality of mind that is exactly what we shouldn't want in a President.

And, for the record, "generalistic" isn't a word. It's as bad as any Palinism or Bushism, and I think some coinages — like "misunderestimate" (but not "refudiate") — are good. But "generalistic" isn't self-deprecating humor. It's a set-up for a kick at people she regards as not only beneath her, but not worth any care or concern at all. It's unnecessarily complicated. Why say "to just be grossly generalistic" when you can say "just to grossly generalize"? I'm suspicious of people who grab for bigger-than-necessary words — puffing themselves up, intimidating the poorly educated — so I'm taking the trouble to catch her on this choice of a nonstandard word.

Here's a screen shot from the (unlinkable) OED:

I've had enough of centralistic, federalistic, generalistic, schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas/All I want is the truth now/Just gimme some truth...

"We have seen their kind before. They're the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century."

"By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."